


quartet

by owenmeany



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst with a Happy Ending, Eddie Kaspbrak Lives, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Internalized Homophobia, Literature, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Mild Sexual Content, Pennywise deserves his own tag warning he's gross, Personal Growth, ao3 user lunavagantt im so sorry i really tried and it's still ! bad, implied suicide just a ref to a jump a character makes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-08
Updated: 2020-02-08
Packaged: 2021-02-28 05:41:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,192
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22608712
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/owenmeany/pseuds/owenmeany
Summary: "Touch me, he might have said, if he knew how, or what it meant: there, where you brushed my cheek. He opened his mouth and waited for the joke that never took form."Richie and Eddie grow; forget some things and retain others; and try to hold on to one another.
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Comments: 4
Kudos: 8
Collections: Chocolate Box - Round 5





	quartet

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lunavagant](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lunavagant/gifts).



“There should be more time like this, to sit and dream. […] Living – living takes you away from sitting.”

— Louise Glück, Twilight (A Village Life)

*

As he grew, Richie found it increasingly hard to sleep. He didn’t have nightmares but often lay between waking and dream paralysed with a numb fear he could not explain. Defining memories that he often dipped into at night so as to metaphorically put the hot poker against the wound were stored in the innermost part of his brain. There was fuzzy borders around most of Derry before he went back that he struggled to explain to his parents, his therapist, his PR manager. This was often the best place at night to dredge for inexplicable images of horror. Among the worst consequences of this deprivation, other than drifting through his twenties and thirties like an overmedicated zombie, was the sudden emphasis in high school for him to see a guidance counsellor. At some point, his counsellor got too drained by his lack of energy and looked over his academic profile. Subsequently his counsellor had called him into the careers office, looked at his grades and asked him what he would do. He couldn’t have been more than sixteen but hadn’t considered anything beyond his final year of school, whilst his friends - Bill? Ed? - still amorphous in his adult, gin-dazed brain, had known exactly where they were going to college and what they were doing with their lives since he had met them.

The counsellor, who had a gap in her front teeth, he almost remembers - had signed him up to extracurricular programs that had been specifically established for idiots like him who still had no idea what to do with themselves. One had been a trip to an art gallery; another an entertainment venue, guest lectures at the community college, another with some local business owner. One had been to a local art collection. He had stumbled unseeing through most of those big, empty rooms with shiny floors until he found a seat to pass the morning and shut his eyes to inconspicuously sleep.

As he woke, slowly, not waking but slipping from one dream to another, he opened his eyes to the face of a woman. Her painted expression was full of wonder, her eyes big, her hands holding on to that of her lover’s gingerly. It was the expression of incredible love, which was the only way he could admit it, even to himself. Beside the portrait was a little card with the name, which he furtively made his way over to, anxious not to display interest in front of the supervising councillor or his classmates. On his palm using someone else’s stolen biro he wrote in slanted capitals: YES, MILLAIS.

On the bus back to school he put his head against the window and thought of her smile, which broke open slowly onto her face. The shy and slight dip of her head. It was familiar, he thought, and then slowly buried it, anticipating its direction. But that face; he still liked to think about it now, open it out like tissue paper before bed, imagine what it would have been like to have submitted to that feeling, and allow himself to love.

(i)

He felt lucky, even then, when he was twelve and could barely comprehend it. Crawling up out of the house on Neibolt and seeing the sun through the windows. Opening the door, stumbling down the stairs, hand in hand with Stan and Eddie. In the light and the air he felt new again. When he turned around he expected the darkness from the door of the house on Neibolt to climb out with him. But it was just a door; and a very old building, and through it came his friends, and the loveliest boy in the world.

It was difficult to put into words how that moment felt. However reassuring the sun had felt on his face and shoulders - a light touch, a parent’s touch - the sun breaking across Eddie’s face as his eyes adjusted and he smiled was infinitely better. It made something well up inside Richie’s chest, swell and swell so it stung when he breathed in through his nose. Eddie’s hair was scruffy and sticking in parts with blood and muck. His eyes were wide and his face seemed light. He looked different when he was frowning. Just as good, Richie had thought, somewhat defensively, but happier too, relaxed without the draw of a frown in the centre of his brow.

There was a lot he had to say and found, not for the first time in his life, that he had no way to say it. The large feeling in his chest stopped any coherent thought. The sun made Eddie’s face yellow gold and caught part of his eyes. He wanted to push his glasses up his nose but found an unexpected resistance to let go of either Bill or Eddie. There was a superstitious fear. He had seen It’s face crack and come apart and yet he felt if he let go of his friends then he still might never get them back. Beverly pulled Ben out the door and all seven of them, interlinked, watched her close the door behind him. The house seemed to shudder on its foundations but remained standing.

They looked at one another, furtive and beginning to smile. Bev let go of Ben’s hand to tuck a strand of hair, still chopped short and uncooperative, behind her ear. It fell away again almost immediately. Bill let go of Richie’s hand and stumbled off the wooden porch onto the grass. He turned to look up at them, and the house.

“It’s gone.” He was shaking. “It’s done. No one has to - has to.” He stopped, swallowed, and turned his back to them. He went to his bike and fumbled with the lock around the handlebars and the spokes of the metal fence. Mike followed and silently began helping him, guiding his hands around the locking mechanism.

Richie turned to Eddie. He wanted to tell him about the light, the way he looked, the way he felt. What was inside the clown room, why he was scared. What it meant that they were still alive. From all of this he drew an elbow to Eddie’s arm and a mumbled apology. “Nothing’s going to be the same.”

Eddie looked up. There it was, in his serious dark eyes, untouched by fear: a kindness, a softness. The feeling in Richie’s chest pressurised and dropped.

“No,” said Eddie. He moved a careful hand up to Richie’s face and adjusted his glasses for him. It was a little clumsy and they hit the top of Richie’s nose too fast. His fingers moved deftly over the bridge and passed over the spot between his eyebrows. As he dropped his hand, a thumb caught Richie’s cheek. His skin felt alien, exposed, raw. Touch me, he might have said, if he knew how, or what it meant: there, where you brushed my cheek. He opened his mouth and waited for the joke that never took form. Instead, after a moment, he let Eddie speak. “No, I don’t think it will,” he said, and turned to watch Bill wheel his bike out to the road.

Mike lay a hand on Bill’s shoulder and leaned in, whispering something low and steady. Bev and Ben tended to the open, bleeding semi circles that ran either side of Stan’s face, gently nudging each other as they worked.

Eddie shielded his eyes against the sun and regarded the sky. He seemed like he might say something. His lips parted, he drew a breath, he puffed his chest out as though he were about to argue, and then he stopped. He dropped his hand. He closed his eyes. His eyelashes dark against his cheeks as he smiled to himself. Richie felt himself watching, for too long and too carefully, and still could not stop.

“Let’s stop in town first.” Bill had propped their bikes against the railings. Already his eyes seemed dim, distant and thinking of the next destination. “Then we need to go to the barrens.I’m not finished.”

Eddie let go of his hand, startling Richie. As he tried to find his balance, wobbling along on his bike, arms still aching from driving the bat into the thing’s face, he realised the feeling was still there. Often it dropped away so he wouldn’t have to consider it too much. It was dangerous. It made him feel out of control. He had not realised that he still held on to Eddie, much less that he didn’t want to stop.

The feeling persisted. They cycled back into town and seeing every passing adult, never quite a stranger in a town like this, felt like waking up. Though the sun was gone, the evening was was warm and the light hung in the sky. He felt it up against his back as he moved, as he kept a watchful eye on Eddie, circled around him, laughing loud and obnoxious at his friends. In the windows of a shopfront they caught their reflection, tired, beaten, looking a little older. Bev blinked and put a hand against Ben’s shoulder, and then seemed to find herself again.

“My mum’s slippers smell like popery.” The flick of Eddie’s tongue under his teeth, sharp and focused. “Asshole.” Richie goaded him and tried not to take too much pleasure in being jostled by Eddie, his sharp elbows returning that touch.

At last by the barrens they had sat in a circle and stood when Bill prompted them, looking at each other cautiously, allowing themselves to be cut open. He had flicked his hand as it happened, tried to focus on the searing pain instead of the buoyancy in his chest. He had watched Eddie’s as it happened but found him passive. His watch beeped and he didn’t flinch. Richie moved his own palm over Eddie’s hand, careful not to move his wrist from the stained cast. Eddie would not look at him. He let go first, and when he drew away, a little of his blood dripped down and splattered onto Richie’s shoes.

As Eddie went to leave, he dragged Richie towards him. The feeling rushed up into Richie's throat as it happened, letting Eddie grip him with one hand around the back of his neck, pull him down, and throw his arm over his shoulder. He held on for a moment, and then left - not looking behind him as he went. Eventually Richie climbed up the hill himself. All the while feeling heavier, as the feeling slid down into his stomach and congealed. He watched one foot edge in front of the other against the brilliant green of the grass, then one pedal before the next on the road home. In front of his house he abandoned his bike and took off his shoes. The sun dipped below the horizon. After some time his dad came from work and pulled into the drive. On the porch he watched his son in the yard and then shook his head. A few seconds later his mom emerged and called to him.

“Your dad said you’ve ruined your clothes.” She peered at him from a few feet away and came over. “Richie, where have you been?”

He sat cross-legged and though his shoulders were relaxed, the same way he would slump over his desk in class, he felt tired from exertion, and somehow severely hurt. The smile he gave her was unconvincing. She sat down beside him on the grass.

“What did you to your shoes?” She had run out of things to say. It was far easier, he thought, for her to care about the things she bought for him, dressed him in, did for him. Sometimes he caught her looking with the repulsed distance of a stranger. So maybe, even then, she had understood what he was struggling to.

“Jesus, Richie, they’re ruined.” She reached for them over his shoulder and seemed surprised when he batted her away. “We’ll have to buy you new ones. I can’t clean those up.”

He nodded and followed her into the house, held lightly by the shirt collar. It wasn't unkind, only guarded, increasingly aware of the neighbours looking through their curtains. He went up to his room and retrieved a box from under his bed, which was the accumulated treasures of a childhood in Derry; flyers from the fairs that liked to set up outside of town, torn pages of notes passed between himself and Bill and Stan in class; Bev’s drawings of some of them, a strip of photos taken in a booth in the arcade, a ticket for the showing of Who Framed Roger Rabbit, now a year old. One shoe he threw in his wastebasket, and the other he held for a moment. Whilst his mother was calling him for dinner, he thought about the way Eddie’s mouth had looked when he said things were going to change. He pressed his pinkie up against the little specks of blood across the toe and laces of his sneaker and found it was dry. He shut it in the box and put the box under his bed. Hesitating, he stood in the doorway. It wouldn't be hard to find the box and there was something in it now he was trying to hide. His mom would only panic if she saw the blood. He took it out again and moved his bed away from the wall. There was a loose section where a poorly-sealed cupboard had been bashed around by the previous owners. He prized the door open and shoved the box down to the far end, trying to ignore the clammy webs that stuck to his arms. Then he shut the cupboard and went downstairs, trying as he went to forget the feeling in his chest, the face of the clown, the feel of a hand against his.

(ii)

Richie stubbed his cigarette out in his empty coffee mug and launched himself out of the bed. His mother called to him again as she began climbing the stairs. He was late down to breakfast and he knew that now she would come into his room and try to talk to him about the importance of being an adult on his birthday. What value lay in maturity at seventeen he wasn’t sure; but she had a nose for tobacco and wouldn’t let him out otherwise. His room was not dirty enough to simply hide the carton under something. And it was in his mother’s nature to begin tidying as they spoke, just overturning and turning out and clearing things into refuse bags so she wouldn’t have to look at him so directly. He opened the window to clear the smell and paused for a moment, considering whether or not he should just throw the carton out. The garden was small and she would find it, eventually, if not today then another time when she would be less forgiving. And it cost money - which he had less of, now that the garage had fired him.

He glanced around his room. She had cleaned out the storage crates under his bed since the incident with the magazine they never talked about and checked there regularly. The same could be said for his chest of drawers and desk. He couldn't have anything here that she wouldn't find and take apart, rough but acknowledged between them. In frustration he crouched and searched under his mattress, knowing that this too was a vulnerable spot, and then hit his hand against the wooden frame.

"Richie?" His mom called from the hallway. She stopped in the spare room and he heard her moving things around. "I called you for breakfast."

He could just keep it in his pocket, he thought, and risk being grounded. It didn't matter because they were bad at enforcing any punishment, and he knew how to sneak out anyway. But the shame was building every day and he had begun to fear - even latently - that this would be yet another reason to forget him altogether. He knew what happened to Brian Cooper even though no one was supposed to talk about it. He had walked in on his mom having lunch with all the wives in the street and overheard, as he had been kicking off his shoes, enough to linger in the hallway; Brian's parents caught him doing something or someone that wasn't forgivable in church and had been kicked out. Now Brian's mom talked about the tragic loss of children as though she had never had any. Eddie from English once speculated that he had seen Brian at the gas station his own mom used on the journey to see his family in York, but Richie had mostly ignored him. It seemed like kind of an easy lie, and besides, the story always made his chest feel tight, especially coming from Eddie. 

He sat facing the bed, dizzy, and noticed the cracking paint in the wall where he had pushed the headboard away. It was ugly and thin, a box shape cut into the flaking surface. It didn't seem like he had pushed the bed that hard. And yet as he peered closer, moving forward on his hands and knees, shoving the bed further away, he found that he recognised it. It was old. There was dust and creeping mould in the incision of broken wall. It was a door, he realised. He prized the edges open. They groaned for a moment and then gave way. 

Outside his door his mother lingered. "Honey?"

"I'll be just a minute." His voice sounded harried, suspicious even to him.

"Richie?" He shoved a hand into the cupboard and felt around. It was hollow, some kind of draft exclusion or poorly-sealed storage. The space was small and cramped, smelt of damp, and empty. He pushed back further for the outermost corner - and jolted back when his hand brushed up against something solid. He looked at the door and back into the dark hole, and threw his cigarettes inside. He roughly shouldered the door to seal it shut and sat back, breathless.

His mother came in with a laundry basket under her arm. She had an energetic look, eyes bright and expectant, anticipating trouble. She looked around and seemed deflated in finding nothing to complain about. He knew he looked guilty. He was perched on the bed too awkwardly.

"You having some trouble getting up, birthday boy?"

He grinned. "Not at all."

"What's that smell?"

"The neighbours," he said, using the practiced voice of Richard Tozier his parents liked to hear. "I think Marcy has started smoking again."

"Hm." She sniffed again and went to rub her nose. “Bad habits, that girl.”

He nodded. For lack of anything else to say he grinned. She shook her head.

“Well - alright,” she said, with extreme hesitance. “Come down for breakfast when you’re ready.” She came closer and he leaned forward, almost expecting a hug. She leaned down and planted a kiss on his forehead, before depositing a pile of folded clean shirts on his bed.

When she had gone, and he had waited a minute or so, knowing that she liked to linger outside the door in case, he got onto his knees, moved the bed across the floor without scuffing the boards and prized open the little cupboard again. The cigarettes were easy to fish out. He pushed his hand further back, trying not to imagine the kind of creature that made webs that wet and glossy. When his fingertips found the surface again he pressed against it. The thing was soft and buckled under the pressure. He leaned in further, stomach turning, shoulders aching, and forced his hand around it, pulling the thing out.

In his lap was a shoebox, dusty and water damaged. The logo was from the little place in the strip of shops in town that shut down a few years ago when the mall opened. He looked at it for a moment. The dull yellow was familiar but the shape of it moreso. He felt absently not just that he had seen something similar before, but seen this specific box, held it, opened it. He ran his fingers over the lid and then, his hands feeling unconnected from his body, popped it off.

It was as though he had uncovered some kind of dig site. The stuff was old and slightly sedimented by the rainwater and draught. Amongst the detritus was things he began to remember. In his stomach was a warmth that grew, stirred by the ticket stubs and leaflets buried on top of one another, the lists of records he had planned to buy at some stage stuck by an old gum wrapper to a drawing he didn't recognise. Bizarrely there was a shoe - his own, he remembered, and somehow small now. He held it up against his foot and felt some unease in the way that his body had gotten away from him, overgrown and not quite adult. And there, staining one of the laces, was a large splatter of blood. Disconcerted, he set the shoe down. The noise from downstairs - his mother setting the table, glasses clinking, the muffled voice of his dad, the radio - seemed suddenly far away and distorted by water. His own hands were trembling, he noted, as he rifled through the box. The box was undoubtedly his. He knew what each thing was, could name the experience if not the date, but the edges felt fuzzy, undefined, dreamlike. It couldn’t have been that old, he realised, and so - why hide it? And then why forget?

Something with a sheen on its surface moved under his fingertips as he scratched the bottom. He struggled with its edges, unable to pick it up with his bitten nails and stubby thumbs. He pressed it to one side of the box and then flipped it over. His stomach dropped, and he picked it up, pressed it up against the thick lenses of his glasses. It was a photostrip from a booth. He found his own face instantly, that gawky smile, the freakish eyes. But then the other faces materialised. Some chick - Beverly, he thought, and then wondered why there was little else he could remember. That was Ben, he realised, who helped run the Yearbook club, and the guy Stanley who sometimes sat at the back of his Chemistry classes looking gaunt, and Bill - which made his start, rocking forward onto his knees. Bill from the baseball team, that homeschooled kid who sometimes peered into the arcade - Mike? And tucked under Richie’s own arm was Eddie Kaspbrak from AP English. Eddie Kaspbrak. How old would he have been? The pitching in his stomach was suddenly painful. It felt like the sharp end to a long joke, as though Eddie had caught him staring and somehow knew, of course he knew, Richie wasn’t careful, that’s why his mother kept his room clean, that's why she had never told his dad, that’s why she kept him in line.

He was shaking as he packed everything back into the box with slow, careful movements. He shut the cupboard again and put the bed back. He stuffed the strip of photos in his jean pocket, gentle so as not to damage the card any further.

He walked into the bathroom and held the sink with both hands, riding out the nausea. He looked at his own face. The boy in the mirror looked stretched out, ill, a poorly-conceived version of who the boy in the booth should have been. A police sketch made up of only the most absurd and essential details. When he grinned, teeth bared, he didn’t look real. Only someone pulling a face to hide their own. He pressed a finger against the photo in his pocket and thought about his friends. The warmth hadn’t been misplaced. They were good memories, nothing to be ashamed of. He was young. He forgot things all the time. Everyone knew he was strange and stupid, and they only liked him when he fun made of himself enough that this became funny. So it was easily done. Still, he thought, as he walked up to the water tower for Greta Keene’s party that evening, it was odd not just that he had forgotten, but continued to forget, and couldn't fully remember. At points he felt he almost remembered the girl’s face, the way her red hair looked cut short, the freckles that emerged in the sun across her nose. The images swam in the heat, and he found the pale shape of her head in profile kept shifting, changing, bending into something else.

As he walked through the grass to the clearing he kept feeling the tug of sickness, as though he were scratching at something close but not yet materialised. Once there it was easy to accept a drink and forget. Or he had hoped it would be - by the bonfire that had been set by some of the larger guys on the football team, Eddie Kaspbrak was hovering with his friends. The warmth softened inside him and spread to his chest. He gave a curt nod to Greta, who had only invited him because he was known to be easy. Then he made a roundabout route towards Eddie, the feeling in his chest caving. At the keg he downed one drink and took another with him. He sidled up to the group of Ivy League hopefuls. Eddie was wearing the dumb track team shorts again, which were obscene and often got him shoved around by said football team.

“Tozier?” He was almost entirely sober, which briefly stopped Richie’s tongue. It sat like lead in his mouth, weighed with fear. “What are you doing here?”

“That’s my line,” said Richie, feeling off-kilter. Perhaps this was the reason for his tone, which was so desperately entertained, it felt aggressive. “I didn’t think you’d come to stuff like this.”

“Stuff like this?

“Yeah,” said Richie. “Fun stuff.”

Eddie rolled his eyes. Richie was suddenly aware of how close he was standing to him, and how little Eddie seemed to mind. Worse than this, though, was the feeling of familiarity; they had been here before, he understood, even if he could not explain this. “I can have fun.” Before Richie could speak, he had prized his cup from his hands. “I meant why are you talking to me.” It wasn't phrased like a question.

“I want to.”

This made Eddie pause. He did his less committed eye roll, where he looked to one side and stuck his chin out slightly. It was the one Richie had seen many times in class before, noting the shape of his neck as he swallowed, the way it made something new and nervous thrum through his chest, his belly, his legs.

“Yeah, okay, Richie. Aren’t your burnout friends over there?” He gestured, dipping his head. Richie turned and caught Max’s gaze. He stood with Theo on the edge of the clearing by the trees chain smoking, shifting weight from leg to the other. He waved, but they looked at him passively. Max was looking past him at Eddie, Richie thought, though wasn’t sure. He always had that slightly confused expression, which was likely the result of taking twice as much Ativan as his prescription allowed for. Richie knew, had helped refill his prescription and smuggle it past his mom, had bought extra from Greta, had taken it himself on some dark, confusing nights to blot out the dreams. At the thought of the dreams he felt something twitch, instinctually, in his shoulders, make him stand straight with a rigid neck. He almost turned the idea of the thing over in his head, to really consider it. Then he moved closer to Eddie - gently, gently, gently, recognising the way he nervously shifted away from him - and spoke each word with a solemn concern.

“Do you remember me?”

Eddie regarded him. His eyes had widened as Richie came closer. He searched his face.

“I just said your name.”

“Do you remember Beverly?”

“Who?”

“Never mind.” Richie pushed his teeth into his bottom lip as he thought. “Do you remember me before high school?”

Eddie shrugged. “What do you mean?”

“Like before I sat next to you in English. Did you know who I was?”

He eyed the drink in Richie’s hand with some suspicion. “Is this ‘cause I missed class on Monday?”

Richie hesitated. “We were friends a few years ago. Do you remember that? Do you remember if—” He stopped, pursing his lips together, waiting for the feeling of the bunched muscles in his back to relax. “Do you know if anything bad happened to us?”

He looked at Richie and frowned. “Are you screwing with me?”

“What? No. I’m just—” Richie scrambled for the photos in his pocket and presented them to Eddie, who seemed reluctant to look. He was still half-grinning as he picked them up, held them between a finger and his thumb. He looked and squinted at the paper and brought it closer. He turned it over, looking for marks, then back again, to all their smiling faces.

“Is this a joke?” He looked up, suddenly flat-faced and shifting away. “I don’t understand. Where’s this from?” Something changed in Eddie’s face, lit by the light of the fire. The thing in his eyes faded as he seemed to remember - almost remember - the flash of the bulb in the booth as it had been taken. Eddie glanced behind him, to Max and Theo, Theo’s cousin; Bill Denborough in his jacket with his girlfriend; the football team milling around Billy Green’s pick up; wildly searching for an out. From beside the fire Greta laughed, high and dissonant - as Richie watched Eddie flinch, eyes wide.

“Hey, Eddie.” The tenderness broke into his voice before he could stop it. Without full awareness he had reached out and put a gentle hand to his shoulder. Under his palm Eddie went slack. Coming back to each other through the instinct of this movement, Richie couldn’t find it in him to be ashamed. The feeling came up out of his chest and he felt it in his throat. If he didn’t let go, he would say something stupid - and all this time he had spent carefully crafting another Richie would be wasted. The Richie that dressed right, was relentlessly cruel to himself and others, insinuated his high body count, laughed all day long about being trapped in this shrinking town. He swallowed, withdrew his hand and took a step back. The blood prickled in his cheeks, behind his ears, at the back of his neck.

Eddie looked away. He was blinking a lot and put his hand against his cheek, rubbing at his jawline. Greta laughed again, a shrill sound that ricocheted around the clearing. The murmuring from behind was dull. Seeing Eddie shut his eyes to will away the feeling was like seeing the photo strip again: it sucked all the air out of him. “I just don’t understand,” he said, and swallowed the break in his voice.

“You wanna leave?”

Eddie stopped touching his face and went to sip his drink. When he finished, he looked down at Richie’s shoes rather than his own.

“I can walk you home.”

“But you just got here,” said Eddie. Against the light and sparks of the shoddy fire, everyone else had become a body moving against a dark backgrounds.

“You watching me, Kaspbrak?”

“No.” He handed Richie his empty cup, which Richie threw behind him without looking. Eddie let himself smile a little. “You don’t even know where I live. How are you going to walk me home?”

I’ve been there before, Richie wanted to say, could have said, felt in some deeper part of him: I’ve been a hundred times, I’ve met your mother, I’ve slept on your floor, that’s why the feeling is there, he could have explained, because you have been too. Somehow.

“Maybe we can figure out where we took it,” he said, shoving the photo back into his jean pocket. “Where we know each other from.”

“School,” said Eddie, setting his lips in a thin line. “We know each other from school, Richie.” But as he set off walking, Eddie followed, somewhat cautiously, through the tree line and down the hill into the dark.

The walk from the water tower into town was along the main road. There was no space to walk at the sides at night, when the ground seemed to shift and change, so they trudged along the concrete strip and ducked into the bushes and long, matted grasses when headlights approached. Every so often Richie would press a hand to his pocket to check the photo was still there, fear mixed with comfort, and sure that Eddie was watching each time he did it.

“If you had a car we could have driven.”

“We could have crashed,” Richie said, tapping his pocket.

Eddie rolled his eyes, and pulled Richie by the shoulder down into the shrubs to wait until a battered car drove past. Through the dim grey-blue Eddie looked at him, he thought, maybe, lips parted. His teeth seemed alien and bright in the dark, brighter when he smiled. They made Richie’s own teeth sting in his gums, the sight of them, the shape of his mouth, quirked in the middle, dipping inwards like a bow.

Half a mile down the road there was a little off-road path that Richie felt was tangibly familiar. Without looking behind him for Eddie, he climbed over the falling wire fence and started down the rocky outcrop.

“Richie!” He heard Eddie stumble and come after him. “What are you doing?”

Richie stopped and moved forward on the stone ledge. When Eddie reached the ledge, drawing up alongside him, shoulder to shoulder, the protests deflated.

The reservoir looked different at night. Smaller, less known, like an opening into the earth, a cavernous mouth. The water resembled thick ink, or some solid surface, dimpled orange peel rotted brown and black.

“You’re not supposed to approach it from this side, it’s too—”

“We’ve been here.” Richie wouldn’t look at him. His hand was tight over his pocket. “I know we have.”

“Well,” said Eddie, affronted by the interruption. “Yeah. It’s the only cool thing Derry has. Didn’t your parents bring you at some point?”

He laughed and pressed his palm against the indent of the photo. “No. But you did.” He turned to him. “We’ve been here together. Don’t you remember?”

Eddie didn’t look away from the water. After a moment he opened his mouth, like he might speak - then closed it again and sat down on the ledge. He was careful to cross his legs and shuffle back from the edge. Richie looked at him for a moment, his bare knees in those dumb shorts, the light across his face, and sat down too. Just for the thrill he stuck his legs over the side and let them dangle. From here, at night, it looked like there would be no landing, only a very long fall into the dark that would go on indefinitely. Eddie didn’t react, though he expected him to, wanted him to. Instead they listened to one another breathe and sat without touching.

Eventually Eddie sighed. “I don’t want to remember.”

Richie looked at him and felt his neck jolt to an almost painful degree.

“If it feels this bad, it has to be for a reason.” He put his hand on the floor between them. “I don’t want to have to remember that.”

Richie looked out over the water. As if by accident, inconspicuous if seen, he put his hand down next to Eddie’s. The feeling in his chest was growing, ringing, some low-tone echoing twang that queued in the rest of a song. The beginning felt a little like something by the Pixies he had played all the way to erasure on a decrepit tape deck but the words, as they grew, were something else. They fell into his mouth and then he was speaking.

“By morning / I had vanished at least a dozen times / into something better,” he said, and closed his eyes. The feeling crept down his arms into his tingling fingertips and down his legs to his toes, into his face, making his lips numb. This wasn’t even his body anymore, though he had no way of explaining this to Eddie. On some real and anchored plain below, the boy he had liked for so long and without reason spoke.

“Is that Mary Oliver?” He seemed surprised. His voice was scratchy and high, the way it always was in English when Richie jabbed his arm or strained to copy his answers.

Richie nodded.

“We didn’t need to know that for class.”

He opened his eyes and looked over. Eddie seemed equally offended to be caught staring, and looked down at his bent knees, his feet laid over each other. His cheeks coloured, high and right through to his hairline. His freckles were clearer in the summer, Richie thought, and had the distant, uneasy tug that perhaps he had thought that before, many times, consciously and unconsciously.

“Why’d you say it?”

“Because you’re probably right.” He could still feel Eddie’s hand beside his, warm against the rough grit they sat in. “Whatever happened isn’t worth remembering.”

They sat again in silence. Eddie moved his hand over Richie’s. Richie sat very still, digging his heels into the rock face below, trying not to react. The hum still ran through his chest, his blood, in his ears, he noted, loud enough for Eddie to notice.

“Happy birthday, by the way.” Eddie squeezed his hand. The noise in his ears rose. “Was the party for you, or just her deliberately bratty timing?”

Richie grinned. “You remembered.”

“From class, yeah.” He almost sounded genuine.

“What do you think?”

“I think it was for you.” Eddie leaned closer. Richie felt his shoulder through his shirt. “For your sweet seventeenth.”

He jostled Eddie, which felt good, and which he hated, for making him think about it. “Greta’s nice like that.”

“Hm.” He was looking at him. Richie focused on not letting any part of him where the feeling had spread to, numbed, and shone through, touch Eddie. “I can’t believe you know something we haven’t studied in class. Why do you even steal my work?”

“I don’t—” Richie tried to speak, and then Eddie put a hand under his chin and kissed him. The feeling gave way in his chest and rolled over him, seeped deep into his bones.

He put his hands against Eddie’s shoulders, slid one down his back, another through his hair. It felt like a dream. Eddie made a sound, sort of a sigh into his mouth as Richie held his waist. Something in his lower belly dropped. Eddie pushed against his shoulder with a gentle hand, fingers pressing through his shirt, until he lay down. They shuffled away from the ledge - which made him laugh, and he threw an arm over his face, so he wouldn’t have to look, so Eddie wouldn’t have to see how it felt.

“You’re smiling.” Eddie’s voice was fond.

He shook his head.

“You are. You’re blushing,” said Eddie, laughing, which made Richie laugh harder. Eddie moved over him and put a leg between his own, nudging them apart. He was giggling, couldn’t stop - the whole thing felt absurd and buoyant - until finally Eddie pressed against him and ran a hand down his shirt, over his belly, lower. Richie stiffened, mouth falling open. Eddie looked him in the eyes, which were the only things except his teeth that he could really see clearly. He smiled. He dipped his head and pressed his lips against Richie’s jawline. He shifted lower, kissing his neck, the base of his neck, his collarbone. Slowly, as though he wasn’t sure how to, Richie put a hand over Eddie’s back and pulled him down. He closed his eyes. From somewhere someone was saying his name, rhythmically, purposefully, reverently … rare and new, until eventually it was Eddie’s voice, in his ear, his breath against his skin, his hand on the buckle of his belt, his body rocking down against his. Richie’s hips bucked. If this was what being wanted meant, how being liked felt - really liked, not just the jokes he told to let people know he was permanently aware of his own shortcomings - then he wanted it all the time. Letting a better person with bright eyes and a sharp brain and a big heart touch him and tell him how to live. He wanted it all the time, he wanted it all the time, he wanted this—

A car drove past, a rush of noise and sound above them. He kept saying Eddie’s name until he realised his body had gone still, lay like a stone on top of him. He looked up. Eddie was staring, bug-eyed. When he opened his mouth to speak, Eddie blinked and sat up. This, to Richie’s shame, made something else twinge. Eddie startled and scrabbled hand over foot away from him. Richie lay dazed with his jeans around his knees and propped himself up on his elbows.

“I do,” Eddie was saying, frantic and trying to feel through the dark for the path to the fence and the open road. “I do remember. I remember everything It said.”

“Eddie?” He pulled up his trousers and was fumbling with the buckle as he tried to follow him.

“Get away from me!” He was kicking out dust behind him as he tried to get up and over the rocks. “Stay the fuck away!”

Richie put both his hands up. “I’m not going to move.” He ran a hand through his hair and adjusted his glasses. Gradually he felt himself coming back into his body. “Can you tell me what’s wrong?”

“I don’t want to get sick.” He had found the path and started down it, turning wildly, trying to orient himself. “Don’t come after me. I don’t want you to make me sick.”

He watched Eddie hop over the fence and walk down the road. His body became smaller and smaller as he marched away. Richie watched the tarmac for a long time until he could no longer see him. And then for longer - until the quality began to change and he felt that it would soon be day.

There was no room in his body to feel bad about it. He felt only numb where the feeling had flooded through him. Distantly, he realised, there was a little concern, that maybe Eddie would tell someone, that maybe the driver had seen, that maybe Eddie was reasonably worried. But it was almost nothing, he decided, in the quiet of after, as he stripped off his clothes and moved to the edge of the rock-face. He had done this as a child, he was sure of it. Though the sun would soon be up the water was still otherworldly. He stood on the edge and thought hard about the photo. He thought about the face of thing that scared him, that he could barely put together, red and white in composite parts like broken china. He tipped forward a little on the edge but didn’t fall. He could not feel the breeze or the cold against his skin. The thing inside his head opened its many mouths and showed him its teeth and finally he recalled that he had once sat with a monster inside its cave.

“I’m not afraid,” he said, out-loud, as though Eddie were there. Some meaningful movement past fear. In fact he felt nothing at all as he pitched over the edge. In the water below, looking at his own pale hands and feet, struggling to keep hold of his glasses, he remembered the first time he had come here and jumped into the water. He should have known, he could have said, Eddie might have understood and stayed: the fall was not enough to kill a person, however hard you tried.

(iii)

Lying on his back in the cave of thing almost thirty years later, Richie thought that the haze of numbness had lifted. Eddie was laying over him, hands on his shoulders, beaming.

“I think I killed it, man.” His voice was deeper and a little rough but in many ways not a bit different from the years they spent together growing up, wasting time until adulthood. Something twisted and changed, the spasms of memory that were still surfacing after being repressed for so long. Lying over him when he suddenly went stiff as a teenager, unable to think or feel or breath, learning, with terrible pain, how it never really went away. He had begun to move, sit up and push Eddie off of him. It never really went away, he was trying to explain, something hurt and young having been triggered inside him.

Eddie, a little defensive in being shoved away, shouted louder. “I think I killed it—” Richie pushed him hard across the floor as the sharp fin of the monster slid between them. It almost nicked Eddie’s side but missed, piercing between two of Richie’s bottom ribs. It was shallow and slid out, dragging Richie with it, but Eddie gripped his arm and through the blinding white pain pulled him back and down behind a ridge.

“Richie, Richie—” Eddie was panicking, pressing both hands against the wound. It was a thin, sliced cut, and though his blood was sticky against his and Eddie’s sides, all over Eddie’s hands and shirt and face, in his hair, Richie felt overwhelmingly awake. The blur he had been living with all of his adult life had finally cleared. He could see Eddie above him, crying, afraid - in perfect detail. His mouth fell open. There was blood in Richie’s mouth where he had bitten through his cheek. He pressed his tongue against the stinging hole whilst Eddie wrapped his hoodie around the wound in his side, winding it tight.

Most people were not lucky enough to survive twice. He knew this. In the stinging joy of being awake he sat up, side puckering and blood streaming through the soft cotton of Eddie’s jumper sleeve, and kissed him. “Eddie,” he said, as he drew back, somewhat differently to the way he had been saying it before.

Eddie’s face went slack. He touched his lips with two fingers, still sticky with Richie’s blood, and smiled. Richie thought of his old shoe sealed away in the wall at his childhood home, still bearing the mark of Eddie’s blood. It was this that made him put a hand to Eddie’s shoulder and push him up over the ridge to their friends. So long as Eddie remembered, he could let him go.

After, in the lake, whilst Ben held Beverly’s chin, Eddie fussed over the cut. Richie was shivering and winced a little where the water seeped in around the sides of the bandages and tape. Eddie was sobbing, quietly and to himself, which the others politely ignored. Richie put a hand against the back of Eddie’s neck and pulled him in, kissing him.

“You’re crying too,” said Eddie, when he pulled back to look at him.

Richie smiled. “A bit.”

“Why?”

It was difficult to explain, even to Eddie: though easier, he supposed, now that he could remember, and might not push him away so quickly.

“I jumped in here alone once.”

“And?”

He shrugged and lackadaisically waved a hand over the wound. “Not so different from this.”

Eddie looked at him. Under the water he reached for Richie’s other wrist.

“Tell me.”

“I don’t know.” He looked at Ben carding his hand through Bev’s hair, Mike with an arm around Bill. “The fall can’t kill you.” He pressed his forehead to Eddie’s. “But the feeling might.”

Eddie looked into his eyes for a long moment and then kissed him, put a hand against his cheek. It was warm, even coming from the water. It was warm and kind.

Ben and Bev skipped town almost immediately, whilst Bill stayed with Mike to help pack up his stuff into boxes. It became easier to say goodbye knowing they might not forget, that they might call one another and not crash their car or find themselves captured by a traumatic dream in the middle of the day. That they could encounter them in the street, somewhere, in a different city, where the land was wide and the people varied. That there was a life beyond Derry. Subsequently they found themselves alone whilst Richie tried to help Eddie abandon anything in his three cases that he no longer needed. From across a hotel room, Richie perched on the bed and Eddie in the chair by the window. They regarded one another.

“Are you sure it doesn’t hurt?

He nodded. “Barely a scratch.”

Eddie smiled, pushed his tongue up against his teeth, closed his mouth to try and bury it.

“Do you remember what it felt like?”

Eddie came and sat by him on the bed. His movements were less tentative. He didn’t seem scared to do things, to want things. “What?”

“When we kissed the first time.”

He rubbed the back of his neck, looking down into his lap. “By the reservoir?”

Richie nodded.

“It felt good, I think.” He shifted. “I was so scared. I feel like - I could still hear a lot of the clown. And it was the most I’d ever felt something - more than fear.” He shucked off his shoes and shuffled up the covers to where Richie was propped against the headboard. “Which made it kind of the same, I think.”

“I’m sorry.”

Eddie put a hand over the wound, gently, not pushing but feeling the padding under his shirt. “Don’t be. I couldn’t bear that - God. Tozier apologising to me. Imagine.”

He laughed, acutely aware of Eddie’s moving hand. “I wish I could have done more. I felt like—” He looked at the ceiling. “I sort of lay there and let things happen. It was a lot. But I didn’t do much for you.”

“Are you really blushing?” The tone was painfully familiar. Teasing with the voice dropping off at the end, too concentrated to be entirely playful.

“Maybe.”

Eddie shook his head. “I can’t believe it. Richie Tozier.”

He climbed over him. It was the same and not the same, still like being in a dream, the same dream, suspended. He leaned over him and pressed a very soft kiss to his chin. Richie put a hand against the headboard.

“What, I haven’t changed at all?” His words were stifled, which made Eddie squirm.

“No.” He looked up at Richie with affection. “You’ve entirely changed,” he said between kisses, his hand running down his body. Richie’s breath hitched in his throat. “And also the same.”

Sometime before dawn he was woken by his phone vibrating. His manager texted about a gig in New York. It was the first time he'd ever had someone next to him that he could relay good news to. He rolled over and bleary-eyed through the dark tapped Eddie, who was already awake, propped against the headboard.

“Hey.”

Eddie looked up. There was something in his features that seemed pulled down by an unknown force. Weighted in his skin, drawing together his frown, forcing his chin against his chest. In his palm was the wedding band that he had not worn since he arrived in Derry.

“Hey.” Eddie smiled.

Richie looked at the ring and then at Eddie, pressing a hand to his face.

“What were you going to say?” said Eddie, shifting around to prop an arm under Richie’s shoulders.

Richie turned away, cradling Eddie’s hand to his chest. He closed his eyes and tried not to think about the pressing lump in his throat, the sting in his eyes.

“Nothing.” He threaded his fingers through Eddie’s own. “Stay until I’m asleep.”

The sun filtered through the acrylic curtains. Yellow light at his feet, over the blankets, over the other side of the bed, which was empty. He felt, perhaps like last time, that he would be angry. But without Eddie it was always the opposite: an absence, that took everything with it like the black hole void of the lake. He got dressed for the day and locked up the room, chatted with the girl at reception and imagined how once she had been of age and equally threatened by the clown. He got into his car and drove away, wondering absently when his life - the real, actual one he had always known existed - might begin.

(iiiv)

Months later, the success of the second tour finally earned him the Netflix recording his manager has been campaigning for without end. Instead of buying therapy he had contacted a gallery collective in downtown LA to arrange a viewing in a private collection. This was the sort of thing it was easier to forget about, to avoid disappointment, to do once there was a measure of success in his life. And then, weeks later, eating breakfast through the lethargy of jet lag, he received a call.

The invitation itself brought him to the ground floor of a grand, converted house. The attendant at the desk looked almost identical to the one that served him as a teenager. He examined Richie with passive doubt as he presented the paperwork requiring his signature. For a moment Richie wondered if it was the show or the fame or simply the antique nature of memory that caused him to stare.

The rooms were mostly empty where before they had been populated and densely worked up. In the furthest room, with the white-grey walls, the attendant left him by the seats.

“When you’re ready,” he said, and removed the protective sheeting.

It was the same and not the same. Like so many things he had encountered in the last few months, it had faded somewhat. It seemed to have run and peel, bruised patches where the colour had warped and faded. But the expression of the women, eyes open, mouth open, face animated and joyous, remained unchanged. He could see the word Yes ingrained in the movement and poise of her lips, the curve of her hands in her lover’s, the open stance accepting his hold. In the quiet of after, when the attendant sloped off to get coffee, Richie stepped closer than he was likely allowed to scrutinise the lovers. The oil of the painting glinted under the strip lighting.

It seemed easier, now, when he knew all that he had gone through in near-complete detail, to recognise the painting for what it was. He had felt it many times, in the face of fear, before Eddie, with Eddie, by the the lake, in the bed, holding his hand against the wound whilst the clown roared in its cave. The woman stared, mouth open, into the face of her lover and with some acceptance seemed to say: anything you asked me, I would do. Anything, and I’d say yes. Love was a complete submission, he thought, or nothing at all.

From time to time he would think about the painting in bed and no longer found it painful. It lost its function of reopening the wound, the tongue to the slice in the cheek, the nails to the slice in his side. It had become soothing. If the woman in oil paint and the sheen of age knew how to feel then so would he. He stopped hovering by the phone. For months he waited for something, even the spectre of a missed call, setting up a voicemail for the first time in his life. And now, instead, he found himself reading, walking, writing, talking.

“Do you think about calling him yourself?” Bev said, crackling through the line. At sea, even whilst moored, the signal was poor. But in herself she always sounded happy, so he accepted this distance as a good thing.

“All the time.” He looked at the framed photo strip on his desk next to the stacks of notebooks he was supposed to be writing his third show in. “Every day. Like before, except I know why I’m sad now.”

“Nothing’s stopping you.”

“Nothing was stopping Ben?”

“Richie!” She laughed down the phone. Through the distortion of her voice and the phone line he heard snippets of life; a dog, the gentle wind against the ship, Ben’s good-natured laugh.

“I know,” he said, later, after they had exchanged stories of personal victory: I went to the doctor’s without crying, I received my divorce papers, I saw a therapist, I walked four miles. “But it has to be his choice, or nothing. He’ll come in time.” With his other hand, he grabbed a notebook and flicked through to a blank page. “If he wants to.”

“You know that he does.” She sounded soft through the line. Part of him wondered how he ever forget her, when her smile. and the enthusiasm she had for life, was somehow audible, and bled through every word.

The answering machine received its first message after the draft for show three was finished. Just a second or two of hesitation, someone breathing, clips accumulating over time as they redialed and redialed. Eventually, one Sunday morning, Richie clambered over the ageing rescue dog he had acquired through Ben to pick up the phone - and caught the line open, still recording.

“Don’t go!”

The caller paused. Richie frowned to himself, caught off-guard.

“Who are you?”

Textured silence at the other end. He couldn’t help it, and thought of the night at the cliffside involuntarily, considering the minutes he spent in a suspended state, unable to see and hear and think, just listening to the way Eddie breathed, feeling an uncertain goodness inside.

“Why do you keep calling?”

“I just wanted to hear your voice,” said the caller; a woman, early forties, with an ambiguously prim accent.

“What,” said Richie. There was another pause.

“I was so angry,” said the caller. He waited. After a moment: “I thought you might know why he left.”

Something curdled inside him. “He’s gone?”

“I never understood.” Desperately he wracked his brain, trying to remember her name. Maura? Myra? Eddie had told him, in the way that he had confessed most things about the intervening thirty years - with an increasing lack of conviction in his own words.

“When?” Voice low and breaking. “Is he okay?”

“Though I think I get it now,” she said, and hung up. He sat in the room until it was dark, waiting for a sign, and in the morning he gave the answering machine to the family in the apartment below him.

Time passed. He lived with the trauma of Derry the best he could. About a year after he watched It die from a fragile distance, Richie Tozier stepped out from the venue of his third show and into the heavy rain. The neon sign opposite the building dyed the water pouring out the guttering above an eye-watering pink. It hadn’t rained at all the week of filming and now he felt shocked by the bite of the cold against his face. Most of the audience had avoided it by leaving promptly. It was something of a relief to leave from the stage door and find himself alone.He reached for the hood of his coat and tugged it up over his head. Someone coughed by the fire escape and stepped forward.

Eddie Kaspbrak held out an umbrella to him. For a moment, Richie found that he could make no noise. There was such a blind, blank horror that the feeling in his chest forgot itself. Eddie smiled and lowered the umbrella some more, held it between them.

“Are you walking this way?”

Like the woman in the painting, eyes wide open, heart spilling out his mouth: “I guess.” He swallowed and scrubbed a sleeve over his glasses. “Yes,” he said, trying to keep his voice even. “You?”

Eddie seemed to consider this. “I think so.” He adjusted the umbrella, smoothed his black coat down against his side. “Can I walk you home, then?”

They examined each other, the way that they had done so many times throughout their lives. Eddie pushed the umbrella towards Richie, who shook his head. Eddie smiled, close-mouthed, taking the umbrella back and looking at his feet.

Richie watched him, thinking of the fall, and all the time they had lived without each other. It was a whole, complete love or it was Eddie walking away from him. Richie stood in the rain and looked up through up at the sky through the mesh netting attached to the roof of the theatre. And then he stepped forward under the umbrella, because, he told himself, otherwise he would get cold.

“Yes,” he said, and curled his fingers around Eddie’s own.

*

**Author's Note:**

> see tags for content warnings - if you feel anything has not been properly signposted please let me know - will amend asap. ao3 user lunavagantt: mate! im so sorry about the quality. not sure what this turned into. tried to include all your wants & go nowhere near your DNWs. if something is not to your taste please let me know and will amend if i can :)
> 
> the quote at the start was seen on the above user's tumblr! also check out the poet's other work [(x)](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/louise-gluck)
> 
> additionally check out the work of mary oliver who is obnoxiously referenced in this story [(x)](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/mary-oliver)
> 
> the painting by millais that richie gets to see is this image - unfortunately i have no idea where it's actually held in collection, but i found it very striking [(x)](https://www.wikiart.org/en/john-everett-millais/yes)
> 
> this song is quartet richie's anthem ("i'll do anything for you" etc) - i listened to it a lot whilst planning lol [(x)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=59BRCOiQVKI)
> 
> i'm here on tumblr [(x)](https://om-johnirv.tumblr.com)
> 
> thanks for reading x


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